This Forum is Aggravatingly Slow!
I have a high-speed internet connection and this site is still slow to display the pages. There are too many bells and whistles and ads that are displayed which slow down the site. I can’t imagine how slow it would be with a dial up connection. I hope the designers of this forum will streamline the site to make it work faster.
Earl
I have hi-speed, too, Earl. Some sites are slow on my computer because of all the anti viral spyware, etc. programs I run to protect my computer.
You might check your computer to see if there are a lot of cookies, temporary download files, and such that you can delete. You might also want to defrag your hard drive; sometimes that helps.
I love this forum. It’s really helped me get going again with my 50 year old Post War trains. My big frustration is getting photos to upload and I know that’s my fault. I get it after a few tries!
Good luck,
Charlie
I’m on dial up and it’s only a little slower than other forums.
I have dial up but this forum is no slower than anything else. On my dial up, everything is slow…
Earl, I coldn’t agree more. I’ve just upgraded my computer and ISP, so it’s a little faster. I have had no trouble with the OGR forum - either going in or posting. Even on dial-up, it was pretty quick and easy. Ironically, I much prefer this forum, yet I can’t even get photos to post despite my best efforts to do so.
Seriously, I so admire all the guys who take the risk (my way of seeing it) of going with digital control on your train layouts. I don’t want to deal with the potential problems. I have enough trouble with all the other “digital” stuff in my life, that I prefer to keep it off the train layout. Some might say that’s less fun. And for some that is absolutely true. But for me, simplicity rules on the three rails.
When I see that phrase “upgraded features” or “upgradede service” on the computer, it sort of reminds me of seeing the words “new and improved” on a 16 ounze can of coffee that now only comes with 13 ounces, but still costs more than before. Hmmmmmm.
Oh well. I’m not the owner of this forum. So despite the headaches, I’m still happy it’s here.
Hey wow! I got a photo to post! So it was my computer ISP. Because I did nothing different this time over all the other failed attempts, other than this time I’m not on dial-up.
Well I made comments on this back when they changed over to the new format, and they still haven’t improved the speed or the layout. I have problems with both those aspects of this forum, and it does limit how much I actually come on here. I have to dig up my old thread and link it in here.
I also commented on how slow the new version of the forum is when it came out. I have developed a work around that makes it a little less aggravating to read the posts. I have a browser with the option to have multiple tabs open (if you aren’t familiar with this feature, you can have a separate web site or page open on each tab.). So, after I open the toy train forum, I look at the list of topics that interest me. I right click on those topics and open each of them up in a separate tab. It takes a few seconds, but they are all opening in their own little tabs at the same time. Then I can click on each tab and read the topic. When I am done reading a topic, I just close that tab and go to the next tab and the next topic, and so on. It saves me the trouble of clicking on a topic, waiting and waiting and waiting for it to open, then reading the topic, and then clicking back to the toy train forum, and waiting and waiting and waiting for it to open up again so I can click on the next topic. I have dsl, but I was about to stop reading the CTT forum because it is so slow, until I thought up my new reading scheme. You might see if it works for some of you.
The problem is the graphics… they rely too heavily on graphics here, and advertising… but that’s what happens when you make something free… you have to make money and therefore the adds help to pay for the site.
IMHO they could do something about the layout because they are wasting a bit of space with the useless gray columns to the right and left. Also, the add column to the right could be done away with and improve site layout.
The adds should be restricted to the top, in their own bar and make them rotate. The Search box should be at the top in its own bar as well. I also don’t care to see my profile information while I’m on the site. If I need to see it, I can click on a link and go see it myself.
The biggest two wastes of space are the upper most menu and the bottom area - but I rarely, if ever scroll far enough down to see the stuff at the bottom - so why have since most people never go there? All it does is waste bandwidth and make the site slower.
Not to be a smart $ss but this forum is no slower than any other forum I visit daily, I’m on a high speed broadband connection and using an 8 year old iMac and the pages load instantly. Not trying to start a flame war, just my experience. I also use Firefox as my browser.
I too like this forum but if you tried it last nite you would have found it veeerry slooow if fact it kept timeing out. and that was all evening, with everybody ,till I shut down at eleven.
Well heck, I slowed down last night too–wonderful authentic pasta dish and two glasses of red wine just about put me into an instant lullaby.
[:P]
I have to say no matter if on windows or imac at times this site is quick and other times you wait . I use ie7 and safari end results same fast and slow. loaded firefox and they must have fixed there issues as well it used to be slow now windows or imac wham bam whats your name sam.
I have noticed that in early a.m. this site loads very quickly and the latter in the day it gets slower so you tell me I’m no computer wizbang I just push buttons and pray.
Most times this site works fine for me but last nite was not one of those times others had the same problem.
Most of the time the site loads fast but occasionally it loads very slow or times out. It could be too many people on at the same time for the server to handle.
my issues with the site aren’t speed (although last night it was insanely slow I just gave up and went to bed), they are more layout. There is simply a lot of wasted space and a lot of clutter. There are a lot of sites with these issues. Personally I don’t understand the whole ‘we should waste space by building the sites narrower than the screen’. Why? You’re wasting 20% of the screen realestate!
I like the way the forum used to be. It used to be always useable. Now it is so slow at times that it is not useable. That is the main reason I haven’t been around for a while. Now that it is winter and not outdoor things to do I have a little more time. The site is sometimes so slow on dial up that I watch house plants grow while waiting. The search system doesn’t work as well either, alot harder than I remember it to be.
I don’t go on it as much as I have in the past also, because it is slow. That might be a good way for CTT to determine the effectiveness of the forum software; monitor the useage and see how it compares to similar periods before the software change. CTT probably does not have the old data to compare it to, however. I wish CTT the best of luck.
Earl
Most of the time, it’s fine for me.
I have noticed a few recent instances, however, where it was painfully slow to the point where I got timeouts every time I tried to open a thread. This was while every other site I visited(and even had loading simultaneously in some instances) worked great.
Yes, this forum is suffering from a bit of bloat, but even on my crappy dial-up connection, it’s still usable. A bit slow, but usable.
If you really want to see bloat, go to Lionel’s new home page and check your CPU usage. Sitting idle on that page, my browser’s CPU usage is 97%! I get the same result with both IE and SeaMonkey. Granted, this is an older computer (1.5 GHz Intel Pentium), but that is ridiculous for a single web page. A little less Flash would be nice over there. [:(!]
BEN10Ben–
What’s a timeout? Never see than on a Mac. Just curious.
